Class Roles + Rebalancing

Not everyone live for the damage meter and live to feel special because they are on a top of a chart. Being usefull for the raid is more important that one's epenis.

That kind of "being useful to the raid" mentality isn't exactly shared by everyone.

You're bound to have several kinds of personalities within your raid group: People who just want to socialize, people who want to get those phat purps, people who are genuinely helpful and want to offer their utility to 24 others, etc.

I would love so much to raid as Ret and give out some yummy buffs AND debuffs at the same time, but if you can't find a GM who can see past a Lock's big ol' numbers, you're not getting to Attumen.

Not everyone live for the damage meter and live to feel special because they are on a top of a chart. Being usefull for the raid is more important that one's epenis.

But you need skill for any type of players, that's why you have various classes i guess.

I don't see how keeping debuffs and refreshing them would be less fun than keeping dots up and refreshing them. Of course you gotta have something to do in between, but that's just doing your task as pretty much every task of every player is, like doing ss ss ss ss snd is way funnier... not!

It's not about e-peen, it's about change and progress...

Ok, let me go even further in this. Let's agree that debuffer/buffer classes are basically the same, right? They both are focused on adjusting balance between initial parameters of sides involved in encounter - debuffers by reducing parameters and buffers by rising them. So far so good.

Now, let's check two best "buffer" classes in WoW - paladin and shaman. Paladin got powerful buffs that are cast before the fight, effectively making them passive effect present for whole fight. As result, paladin, despite having powerful buffs is not buffer - he is either healer, tank or DPS, because buffing alone is not engaging enough. In case of shaman, it's a bit different - choice of buffs is bigger and they have to be reapplied during the fight, so they are not completly passive effect (as paladin buffs are). But mayority of the fights is designed in a way that actually promotes as passive use of buffs as possible - keeping optimal set of totems whole fight, without switching between them. It's rarely the case that shaman is using GoA for 1st miunte of the fight, switches to grounding at some point to counter some effect, then ends with WoA. As result, shaman is either DPS or a healer, not buffer.

The closest thing to true buffer/debuffer role is refreshing judgements for ret pally, AP buff for enhancement shammies and shadow priest mana battery. But they are still very strongly tied to damage dealing. They are not goal, they are added bonus.

To make paladin/shaman true buffer classes, all blessings would have to follow pattern of BoP/BoF/BoSac while all shaman totems would have to be like searing, grounding or stoneclaw ones. Basically, all buffs would have to be short timed effects - and very varied, to avoid buffers just spamming one ability on and on. Additionally, most of the fights would require various boss abilities that would need be countered at the right time by right buff.

And there is always problem of progress. I simply can't agree with your e-peen comment. Except from people playing completly socially, you always need some way to improve your character. If your primary task is buffing/debuffing, you need a way to progress in that, instead of progressing as a healer or damage dealer. If such progress is not possible, at some point class becomes healer/DPS, or debuff becomes completly artificial gimmick, used by designers to keep class alive (tranq shot-like abilities).

Of course, there are always people that are going to play such poorly designed class. But, like someone mentioned before Blizzard attempts to make all classes equally attractive for players. Creating buffer/debuffer class that can't improve its buffing/debuffing potential over time (always -X% attack speed for example, no matter if it's MC or Naxx), is not engaging for player (cast 1 spell every 1 min.) and doesn't allow player to shine (every warlock got the same - X% attack speed debuff, no matter if it's veteran or noob) is a good recipe for unpopular class. Of course you can argue that not every class have to be similarly popular, but obviously Blizzard thinks otherwise.

Trying to Frankenstein together some buffer/debuffer class out of bits and pieces of EQ garbage for the purpose of solving a "problem" WoW has with more dps classes than healing or tanking isn't going to go anywhere fast. It'll just end up with

"Yeah and it will shoot lasers from his eyes"

"Yeah! no, no, no, lasers from one eye and robot dinosaurs from the other"

"And they DW internet memes"

Thats just how I see it going down though.

You can't call a planet Bob!

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You were missing the () at the end of Feral Charge (Bear), this is necessary otherwise WoW thinks you're trying to cast Feral Charge Rank Bear.

I'm not omniscient, I don't know, but it seems more and more like the class roles in this game are predominantly being defined by their PvP utility, and their PvE value is assumed ("We balanced the whole game around PvE until battlegrounds came out, I'm sure it's fine!").

Quite agree on this one. Many of the changes actually done to the classes seems to stem purely from PvP, and not making a lot of sense from a PvE perspective.What's annoying for me is that PvP-centric view, which usually trash a lot of the "lore" or "style" about classes - sorry, but dispelling just doesn't feel right for a hunter.

Additionnally, for warriors, I never understood why the "berserk" tree was for PvE, and the "arms master" was for PvP. Seems to me that it would be much more logical to have the opposite : weapon proficiency, long-term, enduring precise strikes with expertise in dual wielding, for long PvE fights. Rage, burst damage, heavy two-handers, ferocious and very mobile berserk, for PvP fights.The multiple changes done to warrior trees for the next patch seems to confirm this, BTW. They should just switch the feels of the trees (and rename talents without changing their effects) and be done with it.

One thing that is lacking to (nearly) all classes is the lack of diversity in the trees. For most classes every tree has but one path to take, with (near) useless filler talents to make it appear more interesting.

This pigeon-holes every talent tree into a single spec, regardless of what it's used for. If they continue to make the talent trees deeper (as opposed to wider) it will only aggravate the issue.

Rather than trying to provide raid-viability with single-line talent trees, they should be wide and diverse enough in itself to support multiple playstyles, with each playstyle having a distinct line of talents in the tree.

e.g. the hunter survival tree has both PvP and PvE talents, but to reach any of them you have to take talents for both activities, which 'wastes' talent points.

I wrote an enormous post here and ended up deleted it because I'd gone off on a tangent for part (most) of it.

Let me just say this. It is very interesting how dps classes with only one role cite that they should do more DPS than classes that have the potential to spec other roles because of that option they have. Yet say a Shaman who can only spec 2 roles doesn't whine about a Druid (3 roles) being as good a healer as him. Healers tend to be just happy if the healing team managed to keep everyone alive till the boss is down/enrage timer. DPS seem to care far more about their personal performance in comparison vs other players in the raid.

I suppose the competetive and aggressive nature could be spawned by the large number of DPS specs out there as mentioned earlier, and having to fight for raid spots. Still fascinating the difference though.

Thats one thing I hated about playing a hunter on my dead end server, It was very difficult to get a raid spot. I hope blizzard tries to put more tranq bosses in WOTLK to make useful besides auto attacking and going afk.

No. The wrong way to make a class more attractive is to put bosses in that require a certain class (1 of the 10 in WotLK). Do you think if Mages go underrepresented, it would be a good idea to throw in MORE fights where Spellsteal was required? No.

I wrote an enormous post here and ended up deleted it because I'd gone off on a tangent for part (most) of it.

Let me just say this. It is very interesting how dps classes with only one role cite that they should do more DPS than classes that have the potential to spec other roles because of that option they have. Yet say a Shaman who can only spec 2 roles doesn't whine about a Druid (3 roles) being as good a healer as him. Healers tend to be just happy if the healing team managed to keep everyone alive till the boss is down/enrage timer. DPS seem to care far more about their personal performance in comparison vs other players in the raid.

I suppose the competetive and aggressive nature could be spawned by the large number of DPS specs out there as mentioned earlier, and having to fight for raid spots. Still fascinating the difference though.

It's probably also due to the fact that 'optimizing' your healers works differently than 'optimizing' your DPS.

There may be a Healer comp that puts out the most heal per second or whatever, and it might be comprised of, say, all Druids. But you know what? It doesn't really matter. Because even though they put out more healing, the homogeneity of that healing makes it less worthwhile. No one's proccing an armor buff on your tank. No one's Blessing your healers with BoW or Divine Spirit. No Mana Tide or Wrath of Air for your healers. The differences of the healers work together to ensure that even if someone is 'better' you'll still be hurt by taking that sort of healer exclusively.

Compare this to DPS. There's no 'maximum value' for success. With Healers, if everyone's alive at the end you can't really get more successful than that. With DPS, if everyone's doing 1500 dps, you would still improve your raid by being able to do 1600. There usually aren't benefits to doing a specific kind of DPS per se. If Pally heals hit for 12000, you might still want to bring Druids for HoTs, Priests for Power Shields, and Shaman for Armor Procs, Earth Shield, or Chain Heal. But if Hunters Auto-Shot for 12000, no one would argue "Well, there's still added value from having these little DoT spells on the boss over having another hunter."

For DPS it totally comes down to:-How much damage do you do?-How much value apart from dps do you give to the raid?

The second one is the kicker... Is Misdirect more valuable to a raid than Battleshout? Windfury more valuable than Vampiric Embrace? Wrath of Air better than Leader of the Pack? This is where all the arguing shakes down.

EDIT: And on a similar note, I've often thought it would be fun to have a psycho boss who flips everyone roles, maybe only for part of the fight. You know, heal the boss to death and dps your friends' health up. Reduce the 'healing' done by damage to make up for the fact that there's 2x as many damage dealers as healers. How would you justify this? I'm not totally sure, but I'm sure they could do it. Perhaps some form of corruption, so as you cast heals on the boss you're damaging the corruption in him? I think it'd be a nice change of pace.

I had an idea in the past that might do away with the inferiority some dps classes/specs feel when looking at meters after a boss dies.
Dps is competitive by nature. I think it is Blizzard's intention to give the classes with the least/weakest buffs the highest dps potential. They should (if they don't already) balance the class' potential including self buffs. So a rogue's dps output would be identical to an enhance shaman if the shaman gets totems but the rogue does not. Similarly a boomkin (with aura) would provide the same dps as a mage (without). So at the end of the raid the rogues and mages would be on the top of the dps meter since they are receiving the most powerful buffs relative to the buffs they contribute. You might say all this is obvious. I'd agree. Why bring a rogue to a raid if he doesn't top meters? But this leads to people feeling their class/spec is inferior to the others because the meter says so.
Why not a new dps meter? One that adds the damage increased by a buff to the buffer not the buffee. Ignoring the impossibility of actually creating such a mod, imagine what it would look like at the end. Enhance shaman would get the dps they did, plus the increased dps the rogues did because of windfury. Ret paladins would be near the top since their blessings, debuff, and aura are huge and underrated. Rogues would still be valued since a person is needed to actually benefit from all the buffs. I think a meter such as this would alleviate some of the competition and create a more synergistic view of raid make-up.

I think it does for healers and tanks (certainly off-tanks) also, with respect to their raid utility.

I disagree.

For Healers it comes down to:-Can you output an acceptable amount of healing? -How much added value do you bring to the raid?

For Tanks it comes down to:-Can you generate an acceptable amount of threat? (that is, are the majority of our dpsers not threat capped?)-Can you mitigate an acceptable amount of damage? (that is, can our healers reliably keep you up without going oom?)

The difference here is that the first question for healers is a "Yes/No" question instead of a value amount. Almost no healer can tell you their "hps." Tanks can often tell your their "tps" but the fact is that past a certain point (the amount of threat generated on that target by your highest dpser) more threat doesn't really matter. On many encounters, multiple targets or other stops to boss dps make threat generated after the first few seconds completely irrelevant. And, as far as the damage goes, it's generally pretty much whether a tank takes an unhealable level of damage or not. We have a Main Tank and two other Prot warriors guilded. Our MT takes less damage. However, when the OTs take over it rarely has any impact on our raid whatsoever. If asked, the healers will say that they took "a little more damage, but nothing we couldn't heal."

Thus I would say that past a certain point tanking comes down to "Yes/No" questions. Healing output is a "Yes/No" question... What healers you bring depends mostly on their "added value." Thus there's little reason for healers to get too worked up about how much they can heal unless someone drops below the 'acceptable' level.

As a rogue, I look at everyone wanting to do more DPS and think "geez, why bring me, a squishy who sucks up more healing, if you could take a ret pally who did 90% of my damage?" And this was my very first thought at Blizzcon when they announced Death Knights as a tanking/DPS class - "Oh great, a plate wearing DPS class.... If they can do a high percentage of my damage... "

To the OP's point, Blizzard is of two minds about this. They clearly stated several times at Blizzcon that the want there to be real distinctions between the classes and that it was for this reason that they don't have a lot more classes - then they introduced another class.

I just don't see how WoW will accommodate adding all of the Hero classes with the existing classes and not have it be a confusing mess. A game with many different spins on hybrids seems... well, confused.

Didn't EQ have a few pure DPS classes that were left to the wayside because they didn't offer anything more to a raid?

EQ's pure DPs classes did lots and lots and lots of damage (read: you weren't getting close if you weren't one). The EQ classes that started falling by the wayside were the ones that had their damage gimped for buffs / cc's / summons that proved largely pointless in upper end raiding outside specific fights. You ran 2 (maybe 3, depending) enchanters because you didnt want to have to use more. You gained more by using a knight to offtank trash (which was all you could mez, and bards could do that too, and bards were just stupidly amazing if you found good ones, while enchanters were pretty craptacular unless they were god) than by using an enchanter as a non-tank non-healer spot.

EQ is different though. It has (or had, I stopped paying attention about a year ago) focus among its classes, and its hybrids were actually hybrids.

For instance, In the same zone, in the same gear (swapping from sword and shield to 2hander to DA hammer and shield depending), I, as a paladin, would be spamming Greater Remove Curse on the first fight, healing and light curing on the 2nd, tanking the 3rd, tanking/dps/curing on the 4th in different phases, healing/curing the 5th and healing/dps'ing the 6th. To do that in WoW... you simply cannot, its impossible. (For one thing, it would require a 43/48 talent build with permanent fear ward)

As I see it, the biggest problem with WoW is that it fails in equal distribution. This is to say that if you took 1 member of each spec of each class, geared for that spec's purpose, performing that specs purpose in a raid, your raid would fail.

This is one of the comparisons people are drawing to EQ, where in an equal distribution of 15 classes into a 54man raid left you with 3 primary healers, 9 secondary healers, 3 primary tanks, 6 secondary tanks, 6 cc'ers, ect ect ect. Enough to do anything.

WoW breaks 9 classes into 27 focused trees into... 140? sub-builds with a different focus. Surely there is a difference between a warlocks 41/20 and 41/0/20 and 40/21 and 40/0/21 builds. Thats just affliction base. But sticking at 27 broken into 25 raid spots (assuming the subtelty rogue and survival hunter are nowhere to be found), you're still short necessary classes (your healing is light, you have 1 shadow priest, and you're using some pretty bad specs all at the same time to boot. Its simply not feasible to use every class as is intended for them to be used (which is why you have a lot of grumbling paladin... still. And so on for most classes)

The underlying problem, though, is rather complex. To paraphrase an old professor of mine, "Reform just pretties up the problems". Why the Wow system of class balance is broken, and how that brokeness is core to the game as a whole, would be an adequate (if grammatically incorrect) title.

1. Talent trees disallow coherent customization for specific roles.

Talent trees are not designed as an AA system, and are instead designed to give players hoices in character development. However, the construction of talent trees result in taking several, or, in some cases, many, purely worthless talents for what you want to spec to. Additionally, for what are considered hybrid roles, some classes cannot properly spec to fill them adequately (the true paladin offtank healer requires more points than possible even if you just limit it to the snap aggro talent and the shield block talent sorely needed in this game due to mechanics, and ignore deeper talents, which make your hybrid more of a waste of space).

The inability to correctly talent your character COULD be made up through gear.

2. The inability to outgear the lack of talents is not allowable due to Blizzard's rather horrid itemization system.

Repeat after me. Mudflation is not always a bad thing. Mudflation allows classes the ability to function in non-pure roles. Most classes in Wow are hybrids. (you can stop repeating now). WoW's system does not allow gear to be designed for specific classes (its changing somewhat, with feral AP and sd based on +heal) but to truly build on this, you need a system that doesnt scale cost exponentially with stats, allowing gear to serve multiple purposes, and stay away from having to chose between 2-3 (and with druids, it should be 4) sets that are situationally useful, but limit hybrid classes to specific roles.

With the talent system in place to already check players, theres no reason a paladin piece couldnt have the same tank stats the paladin sets have now, with +healing and mana5 or spellcrit thrown on for 'no charge' (much like feral AP is/was free with spellpower) because you cannot, if you are getting use out of all of those stats, get maximum use out of ANY of those stats. See also shaman, druid, warrior, priest.

The ONLY benefit of modular equipment is the ability to change it in the heat of combat, to use the best for that particular situation, regardless of what that is.

3. You cannot change gear in combat.

This goes hand in hand with problems seen in #2. In fact, if you could change gear in combat, modular gear would be somewhat acceptable (though nowhere near ideal). You cannot, however, change gear in combat, nor will you likely ever (until the death penalty is changed up to something like taking a durability hit equal to 90% spread out across every piece of gear you have equipped during the last x amount of time before your death [or same combat as your death for scripted encounters].

Its also established you cannot change gear for another reason...

4. WoW is balanced around FAR too many different situations.

Quite honestly, and theres a billion examples floating around, you cannot balance a game around Solo and group and raiding and world pvp and 5man arena and large scale pvp and expect it to resemble what it would look like if balanced for any one of those separately. Even just saying PvE and PvP balancing, its still two completely different worlds (I could write a book on the specifics of balancing for each in WoW, but this post is long enough really),

Honestly, to properly balance the classes in terms of upper-end PvE, you really just need to gut the gear and talents of all but 2 concrete roles, and let the talents work on allowing completely viable roles of either of those specialized (ie. Paladin as healbot or tank. Shaman as a healer or a lightning mage) with a hybrid version of them (ie paladin as a viable offtank plus spot healer) as a third tree, with NO (none, nada, zilch) ability to take points from a different tree, with gear focusing on the hybrid roles (ie paladin stuff designed for a heal casting tank) to allow talent selection to be the deciding factor of uniqueness.

Its the attempt to not have a square peg (35+ unique subsets of classes) fitting into a smaller triangular hole (25 raid spots) with special notches (healer requirements greater than existing unique healer subsets)

This, however, is nowhere close to an elegant solution.

The other way requires an overhaul of balance mechanics (spells and abilities working differently in PvP and PvE), the deatpenalty, gear swapping, and several other core fundamentals of WoW.

edit -

They clearly stated several times at Blizzcon that the want there to be real distinctions between the classes and that it was for this reason that they don't have a lot more classes - then they introduced another class.

We almost got a second added, with another 2 more in late-stage development. Imagine the fun THAT would be right now.

edit2 - Math of balancing is another funny thing. 50% effectiveness tank + 50% effectiveness healer = spot on the bench. even 755 and 75% is quite often a liability, assuming that 25% is base and not added from unique talents.

I agree that the preponderance of DPS trees/options is a large source of the problems in WoW, but consider that the game is intended to be an MMO for everybody, and "everybody" has some pretty severe ADD and doesn't see the larger picture. Basically, most people would rather play a DPS class and see big numbers on their screens than the help-other-people roles of tanking and healing. That's why a lot of Warriors don't want to spec for tanking and a lot of healers would rather spec Moonkin/Ret/Elemental/Shadow. Those roles just don't offer the quick visceral thrill that DPS does...it's not really a criticism of WoW, it's the difference Tycho from Penny Arcade draws between "achieving victory" and "enabling victory." Most people enjoy the former more than the latter. Honestly, when I rolled my Shaman years ago with no knowledge of MMOs whatsoever, I wanted to be a lightning mage and that seemed pretty cool.

I remember talking to a friend that had raided a lot in vanila wow and then quit before BC, myself on the otherhand, I was still 50 when BC came out, so I have no previous raiding knowledge. Anyway, one thing that I realized in the course of this conversation was that Blizz might have shot themselves in the foot as far as hybrids, when they bumped the trees up 10 points each but only bumped the talent point up 10. So in old wow, you could spec 31/20 which was probably a lot more of a hybrid than 41/20 is right now. Maybe I'm totally off base and someone that did raid a lot in old wow could comment, but it seems like the difference in the two talent point systems pushed towards never having a true hybrid around. Maybe the new top talent should have been 36 instead of 41 (Thus, even a pure spec would be 36/25)?

Of course this would still be limited by gear, but the new 1/3 damage from healing makes it seem like blizz wouldn't be totally against re- working gear a bit to enable hybrids.

/agree Barraind, you said it far better than I ever could of. Blizzard's inability to be able to address class roles may end up hurting them in the long run should another game come along that can offer unique, well designed class roles and a decent game.

So...do you think World of Warcraft would be a better game if they rebalanced the Talent Trees and made it so that you could pick and choose which talents you wanted from each tree without having the current system of "You need 15 points in Marksman"?

They would have to retune somehow because a hunter with +10% RAP, Beastial Wrath, The Beast Within, Readiness, Lightning Reflexes and such would be overpowered but...

...it would allow for the ultimate in customization and let true hybrids shine, no longer do you completely gimp your healing by going 41 points or whatever into Enhancement.

So...do you think World of Warcraft would be a better game if they rebalanced the Talent Trees and made it so that you could pick and choose which talents you wanted from each tree without having the current system of "You need 15 points in Marksman"?

They would have to retune somehow because a hunter with +10% RAP, Beastial Wrath, The Beast Within, Readiness, Lightning Reflexes and such would be overpowered but...

...it would allow for the ultimate in customization and let true hybrids shine, no longer do you completely gimp your healing by going 41 points or whatever into Enhancement.